raymondjames89 wrote:I have spotted that saucer this before! This woman who is always on these rpgs, her characters have them.

Yup. I've seen the 7' tall version of her. Every sentence in her bio had the word "pantograph" in it at least once. Sometimes more. It went from odd to creepy very quickly. Nice to see whoever it is is still living the dream.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to figure out how to unsee that picture, or pray for death's merciful release.

Transom wrote:One of my biggest pet peeves with rpg characters are the ones who start off their gaming careers by getting into fights and scoring with self-made NPCs of the opposite sex, just to show how bad-ass and sexy they are, and how everyone else should also assume the character is bad-ass and sexy.

Of course, when a player creates a character that he or she wishes to have perceived as "bad-ass and sexy," and the other participants simply refuse to do so—in large measure because they have their own characterization and personal agendas—wish fulfillment is stymied. It's always amusing, for example, when one gal wishes to play a loner respected and feared by all and another guy wants to portray a rebel who respects nothing and no one. Those two usually interact well.

In other words, I completely understand this pet peeve. I just don't know that it's actually justified.

The peeve is, the writer is not showing any character. When I read someone demanding to be perceived in a certain light not through style but through laziness (and that's all it is, since I've seen it dozens of times played out exactly the same way), it's not someone else's characterization and personal agenda that causes the reaction, it's the annoyance that yet another yabbo is committing assualt and then pulling some tail with no repercussions for either.

And to your second point, if one person is a loner who wants to be feared and respected and the other is a rebel who respects nothing and no one, and that's all they are, then the two of them getting along is just bad roleplaying. You can't respect nothing and no one except when it suits you, nor be a loner who is gladly part of a group. This is why it pays to give some thought to a character.

PS. JM1776, I love your avatar.

Last edited by Transom on Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've also GMed for many years, but you may be missing the point. What I'm saying is it's a pet peeve of mine, specifically in online, play-by-post games, when a new character comes in and in their introductory post write a bar fight that they never started but sure won't back down from just after meeting the hottest girl in the place, who naturally wants to have sex with him, even (especially?) after he just got into a fight that he naturally won, and for which there are never any legal or medical repercussions.

A subset of this is the character who introduces their character on a ship and immediately writes himself a female NPC who just happens to look like a currently hot model/movie/TV star, who of course fall madly in love with said character.

It's not good gaming, it's masturbatory.

I'm not judging by the skill. I know I'm not gaming to read Larry McMurtry-style prose. Gamers cover all demographics, languages, and skill levels. I'm judging by this specific content, which I find annoying.

Transom wrote:I've also GMed for many years, but you may be missing the point.

No. I get your point, and it's a valid peeve—not that you require my validation in the least.

Such is probably more an issue in online games, where anonymity and distance allow the self-indulgent to attempt employing fellow players as their adoring public ... or, if you prefer, masturbatory props.

You don't put bumper stickers on Ferraris. You don't put graffiti on a church. By the same ironclad reasoning, you don't put a tattoo on a beautiful woman.

People who are too lazy to read the posts made before theirs or a "mission briefing" post and want everything spelled out for them all the time. I can understand doing this if you're short on time...once or twice. Making a habit of it is annoying, especially when your goal is to make another player look bad.

It kinda folds in with one dimensional character, but people's biographies are boring like hell.

99% of the bio's go like this: They start as a ensign and start as a <insert department> officer, promote, become deputy chief, chief <department>, XO and then CO.
This is roleplay, be original people. I have characters who start as a NCO and climb up the ladder to becoming a Officer in their bio, another character for instance was a security guy and was part of Starfleet Criminal Investigative Service. There are so many other "original" thinks you can do with your character. It's kind of a turn off when a captain of a RP has a boring simple biography

I'm gonna jump in at this point. I noticed one of my biggest pet peeves isn't here and I just had to put it up.

No in order to explain I must tell you a little story. This is all said to have happened OOC, but it plays into IC quite a bit. The player in question had a fiancé who died. He has since married her twin sister. This is were it gets interesting. The original fiancé played on several simms with him, this was before my time, but I have heard some reports from others, and now his current wife plays on several simms. It gets interesting because it has become increasingly clear that neither has ever existed. We know this because the lie isn't very good. He has stated that she comes from a wealthy family, has lots of money, and a very large house. This however seems implausible because they have one computer, which they share. He is known to video chat with people, but whenever it comes up she claims to be camera shy. He has shown one picture of his wife's twin sister stating for a fact that his wife looks exactly like her. The odd thing here is that it's a picture of the guy who played harry potter's ex-girlfriend who is in fact very much alive. There is much more evidence, but I need not go into it.

The result is my pet peeve. People who claim to be rich/married to supermodels/or live in manions, then give you poorly constructed evidence to back it up.

In addition another one of my pet peeves is when someone creates another character who's sole purpose is to act impressed about the first character. As in the new character acts much like Watson in the older Sherlock movies, only there to make the main character they ply look better.

And one more just for fun. This one is kind of two, but they play into each other quite a bit. Characters who were heroes of high rank, have legacies that would make even Kirk blush, who earn nicknames that are suppose to show how impressive they were in the past, who then are suppose to be believable as the Chief Operations Officer. I mean if you have 4 Stars of Kahless and 4 of whatever the highest medal in Starfleet is, why would you be stationed on a tiny science vessel whose main mission is to explore phenomenon in Federation territory.

Crap I forgot about one last one. "Barrowing" names and objects from other fandoms to add to the coolness of your character. You can barrow aspects, maybe even part of names, but when you google a name of a character you should not be greeted by articles about other characters with the exact same name. To put this in perspective I have played with a player who all of his characters have the same name as characters from Gundam other anime titles. Even to the point where the character uses some of the more impractical anime style swords in posts.

I do my best to play along with people who do these things, but sometimes I just want to pull my hair out and yell at them.

From ignorance lead me to truth
From darkness lead me to light
From death lead me to immortality

One thing I've been noticing more and more of in Online Sims is that some ships seem desperate to have all departments on a single ship.

For example, on a Nova-Class surveyor/science ship, which only has a crew of between 80-90--who you would assume would be mostly researchers and labtechs. I have seen a couple here and there that have a full marine division onboard, as well as several starfighters and pilots, a division of intelligence specialists and a diplomatic contingent. It's just too much!

Marines aren't everywhere, a ships standard security department can handle anything that comes their way. On a ship like the Nova-Class there is space for only a couple of shuttles. Unless on special assignment there's no need for intell onboard. Whilst a ship's Counsellor can pull double duty as diplomatic officer, or the senior anthropologist/sociologist with help from a xenolinguist.

Generally speaking I dislike Nova/SMS sites, 99% of the new sims use NoVA/SMS and almost all of them look the same.
If you want a site, at least some effort in it and don't use some something straight some the box that looks like 99% of the other sims.
That's just my opinion